Quite by coincidence, Clayton Richard was pitching for the Padres that night. Of the four pitchers the Chicago White Sox traded to San Diego for Jake Peavy in midseason of 2009, Richard is the only one still with San Diego.

Only now, it was 2012 and Peavy was in a friend’s home, watching Richard pitch against the Washington Nationals on April 24. Peavy’s own work was done — he’d improved his record to 3-0 and lowered his ERA to 1.88 in pitching the Sox to a win at Oakland the night before — so he secretly flew from the Bay Area to San Diego to catch a Padres game on TV with an old buddy.

Darrel Akerfelds, aka, “Ak.”

“Cool part was, Hatch (Padres bullpen catcher Justin Hatcher) had taken a cellphone out to the ’pen, putting it where he and Ak could text each other back and forth as the game went on,” said Peavy. “I can’t even tell you how important that was to Ak, to be connected to the bullpen and the game like that.”

The connection between the Padres and Akerfelds — still their bullpen coach — goes to a place so deep that it cannot be reached even by the pancreatic cancer that’s been ravaging his body over the past 18 months. The announcement that Jimmy Jones had been summoned from Double-A to take over Akerfelds’ duties on an interim basis brought his plight back to public mind, but you also get the sense that it’s never been absent from the pitching staff this season.

Traded a couple of weeks ago to the Los Angeles Angels after 10 years in the Padres system, happy-go-lucky relief pitcher Ernesto Frieri asked about Akerfelds’ waning health, clutched at a chair with both hands and choked back the emotion. In the visiting clubhouse of the same Anaheim ballpark, meanwhile, Peavy talked about that stolen, treasured evening with Akerfelds last month. Just a couple of “the boys,” to use Peavy’s vernacular.

“I love that guy,” said Peavy. “We’d been together so long. Ak was already out there when I came to the big leagues (in 2002). Bals (pitching coach Darren Balsley) got there in ’03. You have to understand. I had some buddies on the team in San Diego — Chris Young, Hoffy — but we had so much player turnover going on that I got closer with the coaching staff. When we got to a city, I went to dinner with Ak and Bals. They were the constants in my 8½ years there, close, close friends. That staff was family to me.

“There’s nobody in baseball that compares to Ak. Fierce. Fiery. Tough. And the amount of preparation, the homework he did. He knew everything about you, your guys, the other guys, things he probably wasn’t even supposed to know because that was somebody else’s job. To have him battle something like this at such a young age (49) … it’s just real hard, man.”

While the White Sox were in Southern California, Peavy was arranging a benefit for research in the fight against pancreatic cancer, among the most aggressive and lethal forms of the disease. The winner of a “Day With Jake Peavy” raffle, along with three people of his or her choice, will be hosted by the pitcher and given carte blanche treatment during the interleague series between the White Sox and Chicago Cubs at U.S. Cellular Field next month.